


Shared Language

by Anonymous



Series: Autistic Exchange 2015 [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Autistic Character, Autistic Dave Strider, Autistic Kanaya Maryam, Autistic Karkat Vantas, M/M, POV Multiple, Retcon Timeline, The Autistic Exchange, meteor crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Karkat may not be willing to describe anything they do together, but that won't stop the rest of you from chiming in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rose: Bemoan the constant DJing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LunaOpheliac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaOpheliac/gifts).



 You used to think you had a lot of things in common with Dave. Even before you knew he was your brother, you knew something about him matched something in you. Otherwise, you wouldn't have spent so much time tumbling over each other in waterfalls of absurdist language. You wouldn't have been able to share- and shame- each other's creative pursuits. You wouldn't have had such ridiculously involved rap battles.

Lately, though, you're beginning to realize that it's not a common foundation that provides your similarities. Rather, it's convergence. Totally different forces coming together to produce the same end result.

Take language, for instance. Your words are selected with precision. They are fine tipped needles, intended to puncture, serge or seam. Your metaphors are constructed with delicate care, honed over a lifetime of trashy novels and wholly satisfying, if nutritionally void, fanfiction. But, more than that, you speak for other people. You react, and redesign, and move your words to match them.

His way of speaking is misleadingly abrupt, underneath the Texan drawl. He speaks in fragments, but so many of them that they make an illusion of a desperate, unstoppable flow. If you had your books, you would probably find abridged psychological studies confirming your suspicions that he was silenced often as a child. He has a deep seated need to hear himself speak to whatever his labyrinthine treatise is calling fruition that day, as if once he stops he'll never be given another chance to finish. If other people have things they wish to say in the mean time, he finds them so irrelevant that, you think, he probably doesn't _find_ them at all.

You've met him for the first time twice. You don't let yourself think about that overlap too much, because the way the memories match and differ is nauseating, and you'd like to keep the 'inability to deal with personal problems leading to mass homicide' thing a wholly trollish construct. Even with the benefit of dueling first impressions, though, you never actually thought of him as alien. You were accustomed to being the odd one out, back home, and you thought you sensed the same thing in him. After all, he had created a persona for the consumption of the masses, not too different from your spooky goth one. His posture was an artfully constructed rendering of a slouch. A mathematically precise rendition of every after-school TV special Cool Guy. His sunglasses and expressionless face only added to that impression. Even his voice was a parody of coolness, with his flat tones. The only audible markers of emotion he ever seems to give up, unless he's gone into a complete fit of hysterics again, come from speed rather than tone. When he's calm, he actually finishes his sentences instead of biting off loosely connected phrases.

The conclusion? He was obviously trying too hard to seek approval from his classmates, maybe his family. A wholly human desire that you knew entirely too well.

That's what you thought. And, in a way, you still think it. But, watching him flirt or befriend or whatever these jam sessions are with an actual alien, you realize you probably didn't go far enough.

At first, of course, you never noticed. It was a bizarre situation for everyone involved. If anything, Dave handled it the best.

He never missed a beat. He behaved with them exactly the way he behaved with you, John and Jade. And then, quicker than you ever could have done it yourself, he started behaving like they did around each other. He imitated their gestures, used their phrases. He even changed the way he spoke, adopting the cadence of not-quite-human that affected their language even with whatever paradox space was doing to ensure you all spoke something comprehensible to each other.

He had always spoken like he was one step short of choking, or possibly exploding from the pressure, and becoming some kind of pointillist impression of language. But suddenly, that had become eminently useful. Coming from such different worlds, just speaking the same artificially smoothed over language wasn't nearly enough. There were lost nuances, words that obviously didn't translate at all, becoming incomprehensible mashes of nonsense syllables. But, Dave still had that need to explain every sentence with six others. And that sketched out concepts of the untranslatable, and solved at least as many idiomatic problems as it created.

For the first time in your two lives, you had believed his artificially cool persona. He had seemed, if not natural, then at least comfortable in that bizarre circumstance. And it made you wonder- you still wonder even now- just how far that facade actually runs.

No one should be that capable of assuming the normalcy of alien social and cultural cues. Not without practice. But there he was, practically a utopian sci fi expy. And where had he picked up the ability to parse the wildly unusual as utterly mundane?

You don't let yourself think about that question too hard. You don't have the text books necessary to figure it out, and in truth it makes your teeth ache in a way you have come to associate with Improperly Defying Your Aspect. But it's better than actually listening to the pair of them. They've claimed half of a dining table, with one of Dave's smaller turntables spread out over it, and you're the only other person who's still even pretending to consider the combination dining room and nutrition block a public space instead of yet another victim to the roving field of second hand privacy that seems to follow them around like a cloud these days.

“Just fucking let me do it you insipid, twitchy excuse for an ' _artiste'_.”

“Ah-ah-ah. These records are a limited commodity. We don't want your angry little kitty claws fucking 'em up for keeps.”

“I'll fuck _you_ up for keeps, who the fuck still thinks 'Karkat is a meowbeast' jokes are even funny? What sweep do you think this is?”

Dave swats Karkat's horns with a loosely curled fist and makes the flattest, least impressive attempt at a 'meow' you have ever heard in your life. And given your childhood, you are a veritable connoisseur of terrible cat impressions. Karkat shoves back hard enough that he actually grunts with the effort, and Dave slides almost a foot down the bench, laughing in two sharp bursts of air. That just winds Karkat up further, to the point that he starts growling.

Your needles slip at that, a loop of yarn hanging morose and unloved from the rest of the misshapen gloves you're working on. It's hard to make them without a pattern, but you have plenty of time left for practice.

You don't actually collect the loop up again. The hair on the back of your neck is prickling uncomfortably. You aren't afraid of Karkat: you are literally a God and he's about the size of a fourth grader with pretensions. But, if a human were making that sort of noise, it would be a warning. And if it were any other troll, it would be more of a notification that it was already far too late, and you were now destined to die horribly.

Dave just scoots back towards him and laughs again, three perfectly enunciated 'hah's. And, quick enough that you would almost call temporal shenanigans on it, he hauls a still guttering Karkat onto his lap. As you are literally a God, you know that if Karkat tore out your intestines with his bare claws for assaulting his personage in that manner, you wouldn't have so much as a scar. Dave, however, doesn't even get a wound for the trouble. He just wraps himself around Karkat until the growls fade into grumbles. When the total absence of concern has become a total absence of danger, he drapes his arms over Karkat's shoulders, and picks up Karkat's wrists, guiding his hands with surreal delicacy onto the turntable.

You eye the dropped loop of yarn for a moment, and you can feel yourself frowning as if it's cotton-wool blend has somehow gravely insulted you. But it's hardly the gloves' fault that your brother has no sense of shame, and that his 'not my boyfriend' is hardly any better. You slide your needles through the unfinished work to lock it against unraveling, and then the entire mess disappears into your sylladex.

It's most assuredly time for you to excuse yourself.

The screechy racket of Karkat's fumbling claws and general failure to pick up a beat follows you down the corridor.


	2. Vriska: Pass on Movie Night

 You're a busy troll. You've got things to do, people to see. You don't have time for whatever cheesy garbage is drifting out of the recreation block and into the hall. As if you don't already know. The entire hallway is just slowly building stringed instruments.

The nerd herd is at it again.

But, since you're basically everyone's lusus at this point- and way to drop the ball on that one, Fussyfangs- you stick your head in the door. Just to check up on them, because you're soooooooo generous (and also because nothing would ever get done around here without you).

They're so gross, though. Like, you don't even know what to do with them, they're such a sappy mess. They don't even make good gossip! Lalonde says they aren't in human love, and they sure as shit aren't any kind of functional matespritship or moirallegiance- whenever they're actually talking it's all sniping and low quality slap fights. But they're definitely not pitch either. They're just... something.

And currently that something is “watching awful movies and pretending to be purrbeast young.” Although, points to Vantas, because those are actually human actors so he must have somehow started spreading his weirdly narrow interests around a bit.

Karkat is all stretched out on his belly on the sofa, with Strider splayed out directly on top of him. How does his puny little lowblood thoracic cage even expand under Strider's weight? It's probably sheer force of rage at the idea of dying because Strider's too heavy to actually budge.

“You ain't doing anything stupid in here, right?” You ask, not because you care, but because if you don't then who knows who even will. Probably not even Terezi. This whole meteor would shatter into space dust if it weren't for you.

They don't appreciate you at all. Karkat doesn't look away from the screen. How is he even watching it, anyway? That has got to hurt his neck. His face is turned past ninety, seeing as how deep Strider's got him crushed into the couch.

Dave ratchets himself up, hands on Karkat's shoulders. That just pushes Karkat further down. Dave stares at you with his creepy red and white eyes, alien face flat and unreadable even without his glasses. You guess they're in his sylladex somewhere. You know how hard it is to lay around watching stuff with glasses on. You also know that Lalonde's face- John's face, back when you'd seen it; Harley's too- don't do the same dead eyed thing Strider's does. But, whatever, Karkat emotes enough for the both of them.

“What does it fuckin' look like we're doin', Serket?” His voice is too soft around the hiss and bite of your name, but it's not as bad as Lalonde's, or even Captor's, back when he was around mangling sounds for fun, so you let it slide. You're feeling generous, after all.

“It _looks_ like someone's gonna choke and die on shitty rom coms. Don't come crying to me when it happens!” You breeze back into the hall. Karkat's already sputtering like the crybaby he is.

“They are an art form!”

“Art form.” Dave repeats, either mocking or agreeing. Who knows, with him? “Art form.”

Whatever. They can enjoy their shitty 'art' alone. You've got other places to be. In fact, while weirdo alien-troll romance is in the air, you've got the best idea. What kind of invasive space lusus would you be if you didn't go stare at that (other, inferior) lighty broad until she choked on your judgment. After all, just because Kanaya isn't your moirail anymore doesn't me she can't do better than whatever fresh load of saccharine crap Lalonde is serving up today.


	3. Terezi: Talk About Fight Club

 You inhale deep enough to make your cheeks ache, but all you get is smog and grey and a slash of cherry syrup from the slap of your blindfold across the space between you. Your tongue lolls out, and there is an addition of antiseptic white thrown in to the bitter, gritty smoke. It's awful. You listen, but there's only the endless roar of Kanaya's lipstick. You know the rest of your little gang are still piled on to the couch, watching your every move. But you can't sense them in any way you can describe in scent, flavour and color.

If you reach out, you can tell that Karkat is a rush of white noise and mirrors as he focuses on you and Kanaya; Rose is running a snide commentary that she won't speak with your moirail sitting nearly on top of her; Dave is-

The vicious roar gets louder, and your focus snaps to the unnerving empty space that is Kanaya's mind as you tip away from her, slicing down with your blade and throwing your body counter to the movement. You skitter away, and don't let your mind wander any more.

It's exhausting. Kanaya thinks constantly, except when you're fighting. It's like she knows that's how you pick each move. Infuriating artificial spearmint _zombie_.

But, that's why you're here again, diving over and under her relentless forward movement, dragging your sword across her arms as you circle back around her again and again. It's not a stalemate, you know you can win. She's like an animal when she fights, and anyone can beat a beast.

But it's so _wrong_. You hate when people's thoughts don't move like they should. It makes your eyes ache with the memory of Pyralspite's thoughts. Of how they moved strangely not because the situation was strange, but because she wasn't your dear, sweet dragonmom at all. People whose Minds change when they fight are slippery and dangerous. They leave you off-step. Given where this meteor is going, you need all the practice you can get.

And, no one's thoughts change as much as Kanaya's, going blank and linear and animal. The only thing fighting her tells you about who she is, is that she has too much control to be anything alive. She's a veneer of flappy gauze and white pepper over an endless, roaring pit. She's half chainsaw and half hunger and wholly untrollish. Fighting her puts the thrill of death in your steps.

You can't even begin to describe how much you've missed that.

She comes at you again, a bullet made of noise and smoke, and you wait until the sound is too much to bear, and slide between her lunging feet. You barely avoid getting caught on her skirt. The sharp curve of your cane catches her ankle and the contact rattles through your bones. It also makes her stumble. You'd take this fight to the ground, but she's got the unholy power of death on her side, and you like having all your bones in the correct order. So, you swing yourself around by driving your sword into the ground in a showy cascade of screeching metal and sparks that aren't quite big enough to burn. The force of hauling yourself up and into a new direction pulls at your shoulders fiercely. Kanaya may be fast in a straight line, but she doesn't deal with change well. By the time she's half way up again, you slam your cane down on the base of her horn, and she collapses like a pile of loosely stacked plushies.

You don't even have time to get your blade all the way to the back of her neck before Rose is calling it in your favor.

“We-e-ell,” Vriska drawls, shoving past you. You don't even need to inhale to know she's grinning. “Losing your edge, Kanaya!”

You don't need your Sight to know how pleased Vriska is, but you lap it out of her head directly. You're getting better, but you and Karkat are still the only mundane people on this rock. Beating Kanaya is a rare treat.

The veneer of civilized almost-life has been rolled back over the emptiness in Kanaya's head by the time you've both cleared the recreation block floor, heading for the couch. You cram in next to Karkat, smushing him up tight against Dave. Kanaya perches with infinite delicacy on the armrest. If you wanted to, you could See why she's choosing that over cramming everyone in tighter. Maybe she doesn't like being touched after a fight. But, you prefer listening to Karkat squawk and thrash around like a frightened cluckbeast, relying on your ears and your nose to pick out the nuances of his annoyance.

It beats watching Rose and Vriska fight, which is the most boring thing in two universes.

It's a little bit better for you, at least. Your Sight lets you keep up with most of what's happening for at least a minute. And, groundwork is key to good combat! For everyone else, relying on plain old sight, it's just two lighty broads staring at each other from precisely eight feet apart. Circling. Sometimes making little huffs. They'll keep going for at least ten minutes.

“So, Cool Kid!” You declare a minute in. Rose's Mind is starting to burn too bright for your tastes, moving from sour-sharp snaps to an icy heat that hurts for the paradox as much as the intensity. She's using her own Sight now, and it doesn't mix too well with yours. One Seer to a Session, and all. Vriska is a little easier for you, but she'll slip past where you can track soon enough. “Changing your bet?”

Dave snorts, a bustle of pajama fabric and strawberry-rust. “Nah, no way.”

Vriska growls impatiently, but you know better than to try and See her now. You stick to your usual four senses.

“And, what about you, Karkat?” Kanaya asks, gentle as anything.

“If you think I'm betting on this festering pile of writhing maggot shit, you're delusional.” He grumbles, and you consider his general unwillingness to spout off a beatific font of curses a sign that your general draping of self over him is working. You slant down further, and kick your knees up over the armrest. If your elbow digs into his thigh while you're stretching out enough to get your horns into Dave's lap, that's no concern of yours.

“Get the fuck off me you blood sucking leech,” Karkat says, but he doesn't actually push you off. You can literally feel him trying to decide whether to. You don't even need to See it. It's in the tension in his thighs, and the way his blood races too fast underneath your spine, and the sudden quiet where his constantly tapping foot falls into perfect, hyper-aware stillness.

There was a time when you would have thought those signs pointed to a different cause. But you don't let yourself think about that, because thinking about that is one small part of how the girl who Is Not You got into her shitstorm of debauched fuckery. You'll stick to stealing her vigilante fashion sense and nothing more. The blindfold really brings something to your fights. The rest of it- her- is worthless.

Someone's sneakers squeal outrageously from the cleared fighting space, but you've got plenty of time before either one of them tips the balance.

“Nah, the blood sucker's over here, bro. You've got the rabid one.” You can feel Dave's weight shifting, just enough to rustle your hair. He does something you don't catch, and Karkat calms down again. You've stopped trying to keep track of the whole Bros or Moirails or Matesprits or Human Boyfriends thing by now. Even a quick rifle through their minds in the middle of shitty human movie night hadn't given you anything but a deluge of burnt-sweet molasses and a rough concept of books fitting perfectly into shelves and candy coated grubcorn separated into piles by color. But whatever's going on there, Dave's a deft hand at cutting off Karkat's more bilesome ranting.

You're about to put in some solid groundwork to pretending you don't know exactly how this night is going to go, when the tide breaks. All that analytical silence as Rose and Vriska collected their information and their luck and their various futures goes crashing aside in a riot of screeching rubber, clattering plastic, and the shine of light off needles that is almost, not quite, audible. Since you can't actually see what's going on, and have learned not to try to See it, they're just matching cacophonies of banana-cantaloupe, and bizarrely, Rose is the one with hints of cerulean while Vriska is the one with a broad slash of alienblood red. It's a mess, and you never know what's going on until it's over.

This time, Rose has her knees on Vriska's wrists, shins pinning her hands shut with two dice uncast. Her needles are ever so delicately holding Vriska's eyes shut.

“Match to the cantaloupe blueberry!” You can smell Rose's muscles relaxing, tension bleeding out as she drifts lazily into the air. For people who didn't learn to fly from birth, your humans sure are fond of it. Vriska scurries out from underneath Lalonde's sun-lemon leggings, stowing her dice. When she stays silent too long, you clear your throat meaningfully.

It's a little bit obvious, but Vriska wouldn't know what subtlety was if it blew out her eye. “Fiiiiiiiine. Good match, Lalonde. But next time is mine!”

Karkat is wiggling anxiously under your shoulders. You pretend not to notice. Dave slides up and out from beneath your horns, and then yanks you forward by your blindfold, until you're bent entirely in half and Karkat is free. Vriska has slipped back into her usual layers of black and blue, so it's easy to tell when she sits next to you. Rose doesn't believe in sharing couches with Vriska when there aren't other bodies in between them, so she's just floating aimlessly next to Kanaya. You spread out further, until your horns are just shy of the fall of Kanaya's skirt.

Karkat and Dave do this thing every time they're about to start trying to rip each other open. They're too far away for you to sniff out the specific movements, but it's some kind of coded hand signal language. You don't think it's a Human thing, because every time you ask Rose she just shrugs like it doesn't matter, instead of telling you at length about how and why humans have hand speech, or taunting you with secrecy. You don't think she's ever going to forgive you for trollish secrecy getting her killed once. You didn't really appreciate that until you started trying to make sense of your own deaths. It's pretty brutal so you can almost forgive her. Anyway, she doesn't know what it is.

You can See their conversation happening, if you want to, but it's all boring squabbling over rules because Dave is God Tier and Karkat is literally the least powerful person on this rock. The whole 'having a language entirely their own' thing is more interesting, and since neither of them ever seem to be thinking about why or how they developed it, you can't really tell either.

“No flight, no stopping time.” Dave says, eventually.

“The record will show your restrictions,” You call back.

And then they start.

In the beginning it's easy to keep track of them. Dave becomes the aggressor quickly: he's faster and he has better reach even without his weapon adding another thirty inches to it. Karkat isn't good at being defensive, but he's a contrary little shit and the interlocking curves of his sickles drag Dave's forward thrusts to a stop more than once. But he's never quite got enough weight behind them to actually haul Dave forward or down, and put the fight into anything resembling the low to the ground, close quarters combat he excels at.

But once they're warmed up and hitting their stride, it gets harder to make sense of. When they start, they're moving like fighters, like soldiers in training. They may not be as devastating as Rose and Vriska, or as precise as you, or as objectively horrifying as Kanaya, but they do know what they're doing.

But slowly, surely, the movements between them shift into something unnatural. It's not just the way Dave flickers out of existence sometimes- that's just normal human bullshit as far as you can tell. It's the way Karkat is never surprised by where he turns up, like he can track Dave somehow. Like he knows exactly where he's going. But not well enough to actually stop him.

And Dave's stances are all wrong. He fights with a sword; sometimes you do too. His is a big, hulking thing that requires a different style than your own, but in the end, if you needed to switch with him for something, you'd both stumble through. You know enough to recognize the cadence of footfalls and breath, and the whistle of air being sliced. You know enough to realize that he's moving wrong.

Not a purposeful, match throwing wrong, but something stranger. You know precision sword fighting like you know how much blood Vriska can lose before she can't walk straight, or how many crimes Senator Lemonsnout has been convicted of- and how many he has escaped judgment for. Dave is precise now, but that doesn't make him good. His moves turn rigid and mechanical. If he were fighting you, or Rose, or anyone else, it wouldn't take more than a minute to pin him down and take the win. A single change in rhythm or style would leave him scrambling for anything to make sense of the fight. He's turned into a robot, and not an Alternian pseudo-organic one capable of hosting a complex consciousness, but a wholly Human construct of ticking metal and absolutes.

It should make the fight end in a matter of seconds. Karkat may not be an expert at any one style of fighting, but he's got a breadth of styles at his disposal. He mixes and falters through them in the way only someone who didn't actually have to focus on one good move to avoid being constantly slaughtered can. And he doesn't have the commitment to actually stick to any of them for more than a few minutes at a time. Not with anyone else. But with Dave, he picks one- one which involves a metronomic rhythm of step slash slash, tonight- and holds it.

Fighting Dave is the only time he ever seems to fight correctly. Not that his mixed up mash up of styles wasn't perfectly okay at getting through their own session. But here, he turns into the sort of relentless force of will that always seemed lacking before. He can yell himself red in the face, pick an argument and keep going until everyone else has stopped trying to remember what was right or wrong and has just given up. With Dave, he finally fights like he talks.

And Dave matches his level of skill, either unconsciously or as a matter of choice, so that it takes them twice as long as Vriska and Rose to even draw first blood. It's absolutely a fight, but it's also a stiffly choreographed dance. The imperial bulletrina corps would be ashamed by the lack of artistry and lethality, but the resemblance is there.

It's been twenty minutes by the time Karkat's breathing shifts into something a little more ragged. Dave might mistake it for exhaustion, and Karkat is obviously too dialed in on matching Dave's flickery steps to notice, but you can feel Vriska and Kanaya sharing a Look above you, and you roll off Vriska's lap and the couch in a single shot.

“Time to go,” You announce in a whisper that probably doesn't reach Dave and Karkat. They might not notice, even if it did.

You all edge around the wall and out the door, going your separate ways. But when the corridor is clear, you slip back inside, just to see where this mess is going. They aren't kismeses; you've watched them to the end enough to know that this isn't foreplay. It's something else you haven't made sense of yet. And you want to know. Understanding Dave's thoughts is difficult by nature. He may be infinitely predictable and malleable, but he's still an alien, with alien motivations and alien desires. But Karkat has a weirdness in his head that makes you grateful you have your Sight at all, and frustrated by how hard it still is to predict when he's going to light up like a firework, and when he's going to explode in a gory mess of external hatred and internal loathing.

Watching them fight, though, they both look alien. You have memories of a Dave who never picked up a weapon in a sweep and a half, and fought like he'd forgotten how his feet worked. You have fought this particular Dave yourself, and he's easy enough to trip and trick when you find the right opening.

You've Seen a Karkat who gave up fighting because he didn't want you to keep being hurt. And you've fought this Karkat who desperately wants to win, but hasn't quite figured out how yet.

You've even seen a different Dave and a different Karkat fight, aimless squalling and hurt feelings and a gloomy, suppressing grey fog over everyone's shoulders.

But together? The combination of this Dave, this Karkat. They're interesting, they're entrancing. Their bodies move in unnatural, discrete sections, their thoughts are rushing and formless and don't reveal a single thing. You can't help wanting to compare them, to dissect them. You want to swallow them up and see if you can figure out the pattern to their wins, and losses, and why they become this odd thing together.

Eventually, when they stop, it seems more like an accident than a victory.


	4. Gamzee: Refuse to Smile for the Camera

 You don't trust that motherfucker to be alone with your best friend.

You don't like the way he talks: words spilling out like tipped over garbage. You don't like the way he moves: jerky and awkward, like he's forgetting where his walk-nubs go every time he lifts them up. You don't like the way he laughs: fake, sharp.

But you don't get to do anything about it, because you're stuck in the dark. Spider-sis is too tricky, too vicious, she'll catch you the second you step into the Light.

The slats of the vent make it hard to see what they're doing, but you're not leaving that alien motherfucker alone with Karkat. No way. Don't matter that all he's doing is making your bro sit on weird shit and hold his arms out in weird ways while he points a bug eyed box at him that clicks loud enough to make you flinch. Pictures is harmless, but harmless is just a way to be distracting. Makes it easier to snap someone's head right off if they ain't paying attention to you.

You pay attention instead.

Click, click, click goes the bug eyed box. That alien motherfucker always makes it click three times before he goes and moves Karkat around again.

After a while, they switch places. The alien is still directing everything, even with the box in Karkat's prongs. Stands your bro up right here. Sets himself up just over there. Makes his face look like he actually feels something other than sick, predatory joy. Says things like, “on three,” and, “No, that's the aperture not the focus.” Sometimes your bro makes suggestions and maybe the alien listens, but it's all a trick to get Karkat feeling easier around him.

You know it's a trick, 'cause he keeps his shades on and never flinches at the bright light that goes off sometimes. Karkat flinches, curses at it for trying to burn his gander bulbs right out of his blistering view sockets. It's all a fucking trick.

You're not gonna let it happen though. So you keep watching, even after the picture box gets put away and they just sit there, not talking or doing anything in particular. You've never known your bro to be so quiet. But all that happens is Karkat's leg taps up and down, up and down, going forever like some kind of spring. And the alien motherfucker leans on him and taps his fingers together to match Karkat's beat.

Eventually you have to guess they're done, and whatever attack he's planning is gonna come another time. Besides that, Maryam usually comes through here soon, and you don't want none of her fake, dead light putting you anywhere that spider-sis can see.


	5. Kanaya: Put a Stop to All These Complaints

 Karkat fancies himself a master of romance. Terezi and Rose are quite keen to be declared the indomitable queens of thought and mind. Vriska just knows how to play people.

You, on the other hand, never had much in the way of social contact growing up. There was Trollian, of course. The occasional video log. School feeds delivered right to your home, which sometimes included a digital group work component. But for the most part, you had no idea how people actually spoke to one another, or how their bodies could telegraph an entire conversation in a language you doubt you'll ever be fluent in. Broadcast dramas and video grubs can only take you so far, and having spent well over a sweep in genuine contact with others, you know now that most films are melodramatic pantomimes at best.

It is because of this that you recognize what Dave Strider is doing.

You do not spend any more time socializing with him than is really required of you as his hatchmate's matesprit, but you understand him. He looks at everyone and every thing as if it is equally foreign. Most interestingly, he often has the same bewildered responses to Rose's inescapable bullshit as you do. That he hides it beneath a completely blank face threw you for a while, but you've said the same things at the same times as him too often for it not to shine through eventually.

In fact, it's that eternal facade of expressionlessness that is the biggest difference between you. You can tell what different shapes of smile mean, because you can make those shapes yourself. You simply attach the meaning they have for yourself on to other people. You know what anger looks like, or restraint, because you have made those faces, have hunched into those postures.

Dave does not.

So, you put it upon yourself to help him however you can. It wouldn't do for you to leave someone floundering in the same state of confusion you occupied only a sweep ago. Not when he's so easy to assist. Unlike so many of the people you've tried to help in your lifetime, Dave is an eager student. As long as you don't actually try to talk about anything, at least.

So, you leave him trinkets with notes attached.

When Karkat complains wildly throughout a communal meal one evening that Dave is ignoring him, for example, you begin planning a simple project that will take all of an hour to sew, though it ends up taking two more to alchemize the right fabric. That you have noticed no difference in the quantity of time Dave spends in Karkat's rather intense presence is not particularly relevant. You wouldn't pretend to understand whatever delicate balance they have between then.

Later that night, you deliver a small, firm pillow modeled after Rose's cherished violet shame cushion- tassels and all- to Dave's respite block. But unlike Rose's seadweller gaudy one, it is a mundane charcoal grey, embroidered with eye wateringly blue blossoms.

This Pattern Depicts A Particular Type Of Flower Which Often Grows In The Region Of Alternia In Which Karkat Resided  
If You Give It To Him It Will Suggest To Him That You Have Thought About Him Enough To Ask Other People About His Home  
I Would Also Suggest You Actually Ask Someone About His Home At Some Point Even if It Is Only Karkat Himself  
This Will Indicate That He Occupies Significant Space In Your Mind Even When Not Physically Present  
Without Such Obvious Gestures There is No Way For Him To Know This Unless Told Directly  
And I Believe We All Know How Poorly Trying To Have A Direct Conversation With Both Of You Present Can Go

Your deliveries are intermittent, but frequent enough. You make them whenever the mood strikes. Another of them comes shortly after your own matesprit- not that you would ever make the mistake of calling Karkat Dave's Matesprit ever again- returns to your crafts block to knit a pair of gloves in the light which you radiate, and absolutely not sulk.

After you have prodded and fussed enough that the story comes out, you tuck down on your innate reflex to call it sweet that they are sharing Dave's craft. You even manage not to point out that you and Rose are also commandeering an entire room to stare intermittently at each other while working on leisurely design activities. It is, you have been assured at length, not the same thing. The concept of public spaces is still difficult to get used to, even after all this time.

The next evening, you pull yourself out of your pile and depart for the alchemization block in the early hours. After surprisingly little work, you have produced a charming string of crystalline beads. They capture even the dim, directionless light of the meteor's labs and throw out a litany of sparkles in colors you barely have the words to describe. When shaken, the dancing rainbows are accompanied by a pleasantly musical chime.

If You Continue To Manhandle Him Into Performing The Correct Musical Actions On Your Personal Property It Will Be Regarded As Establishing A Claim On Him  
If He Continues To Allow This Without Fighting Back You Should Interpret It As A Romantic Gesture  
And Romantic Gestures Are Usually Best Handled By Reciprocation  
Even In Established Relationships 

After a few weeks of Dave and Karkat becoming even more inseparable, to the extent that you have at least one confused half-waking daydream about them fusing into a single being, you are enjoying a fond night of Romantic Novel Exchanges with Rose.

Vriska arrives to do Vriska things, which mostly involve staring between you and Rose in a very meaningful fashion until you have both devolved into unstoppable blushing and Rose actually stutters over a line.

She makes an offhand remark about how you and Rose are even more pathetic and up in each other's space than the purrbeast twins- later revealed to be the name she has given Dave and Karkat for the night. Apparently, they've been watching films while Dave attempts to crush Karkat bodily.

You make a note of it, and a few nights later, you've alchemized an impossibly soft plush. You genuinely doubt its like could have existed in a real place, but fortunately you are all living in a sort of eternal void dream. You make an entire bolt of it, reveling in the way that it releases a faint grass-and-sunlight scent when crushed. You're going to make any number of clothes and accents from it, of course. But you first set about measuring the recreation block couch, and making a slip cover.

It takes a surprising amount of effort to fold it flat, but you persevere and eventually there is a roughly cubical pile of fabric with a note pinned atop it resting outside Dave's respite block.

Ignore Vriska Entirely  
She Has No Idea How Upsetting Her Constant Need To Invade Everyones Privacy Really Is  
Trolls Of Her Rank Are Rarely Given Boundaries As Grubs And She Is A Uniquely Insensitive Sort  
As Long As He Cannot Smell Her Approach Karkat Might Not Even Notice At All  
Also I Dont Know What Might Be On That Couch But Given The Amount Of Traffic It Receives I Would Not Recommend Putting Your Face Directly On It 

Late one morning, Vriska announces that you're all going to start practicing for the eventual end of this voyage. Specifically, there's a war waiting, and you'll all need to be in peak condition.

Or, as she puts it, “We've gotta stop fucking around and actually do something because Lord Doucheface ain't gonna murder himself.”

You find the entire tournament thing hasslesome at first, but it eventually becomes a worthwhile distraction. Besides, Dave agrees with your constant bets against Terezi that Rose will beat Vriska. You don't acknowledge the thrill of vicarious joy that you get every time she pins your former moirail and takes the victory for herself, but it's still _there_.

You all learn to start scheduling Dave and Karkat's round last, and leaving them to their games. Sometimes, however, Terezi's writing updates the scoreboard with the results of matches that you were under the impression were not to be seen to their inevitable conclusion. Perhaps not so inevitable. You really don't want to believe Vriska's total inability to understand reasonable personal limits has brushed off on Terezi so quickly.

Regardless, you spend some time discussing healing items with Rose, Vriska and Terezi. It's only reasonable, you inform them, that everyone be ready to take care of themselves if they get hurt during these practice fights.

You pack a set of boxes that Rose brought you- white, hard shells with flushed red plus signs on them- and drop them off at each respite block a few nights later. Dave's doorway, however, gets two. Bound together with some silken cord, which conveniently also holds your note.

If He Refuses To Let You Take Care Of Him It Isnt Because He Is Upset With You  
It Is Wildly Inappropriate For Anyone Other Than Ones Moirail To Help One Treat Such Injuries  
But Giving Him The Kit Will Express That You Care About His Health And Comfort  
He Will Be Grateful  
On The Other Prong Please Dont Think Too Much About The Fact That We Are Saving Your Matches With Karkat Until The End Of The Roster Each Week  
The Rest Of Us Strange And Troublesome Aliens Find The Intensity Of Your Fights Mortifyingly Intimate And Emotionally Exposed

At this point, however, Rose has begun to notice the care you are taking with her hatchmate. Or, potentially, Dave has said something to her. You don't pretend to understand the bizarre, apparently unromantic nature of Siblingship anymore than you would try to make sense of their alien taboos. It is simply something you have come to accept.

The next time you offer your unasked for but often heeded advice, it is with a deep plastic tray full of sealed bottles of chemicals. And, instead of being delivered to Dave's respite block, they are planted on a bare table in a lab you had assumed unused. It takes a fair bit of maneuvering to avoid catching the hook of your horn on the various wires hanging taut across its length.

Rose assures you that this is Dave's “dark room,” although the red light is quite relaxing, in your opinion, and not particularly dark. She also promises that these are the very same chemicals he is always alchemizing after he has been clicking his wholly mechanical camera everywhere. Humans, it seems, do not have digital cameras or grubs bred to excrete precisely mixed ratios of developing agents. You don't call it quaint, but you think it regardless.

I Know For A Fact That I Have Explained The Nature Of Controlled Positioning Of Anothers Movements To You Before So I Will Try To Be More Obvious  
Has It Occurred To You To Allow Him To Control You Instead

The last of the gift/lesson combinations you give Dave is the one you are most proud of. It has taken you several perigrees of combining and recombining any number of codes and objects. Self help guides stolen from Tavros's former block. Documentaries about Alternian fauna from Nepeta's, and Alternian histories from Eridan's. Your own rather especially sordid novels, rife with the sort of detailed imagery that could make even the most experienced troll blush furiously. The western Human-standard Alternian dictionary you and Rose produced in an attempt to teach each other more about your respective worlds. Some of Terezi's legislacerative study manuals, dedicated to reading the faces and bodies of trolls on trial to determine the specific nature of their guilt and crimes.

Rather than a note, you merely translate the jagged alternian script of the data grub's title into the dialect of Human that Rose and Dave both read- as opposed to the ones that seem to be unique to one or the other.

A Comprehensive And Interactive Guide To Understanding The Implicit Information Held In Posture And Expression When Communicating With Alternian Trolls Including Threats Flirtations And Cultural References 

You think that is probably explanation enough.

The first time Dave angles his chin trollishly down during an argument- instead of that ridiculous human habit of exposing extra neck when they're about to start a fight- you consider it a victory. Karkat is just staring, and you're fairly certain it's not because Vriska and Dave arguing is particularly entrancing.

That Rose, Vriska and Terezi finally stop having to complain about the way they keep parading their nascent relationship all over the meteor's so-called public blocks is merely a bonus.

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt for this piece was: "Meteor fic - Dave, Karkat, and their various obsessions." Unfortunately, I seem to have veered dramatically off the path. I apologize profusely, but hope that it meets expectations all the same.


End file.
